View full sizeBOB ELLIS/OregonianMilwaukie officials invited the McMenamin brothers to consider converting the rustic-style 1938 building on the site into a brewpub.

The city of Portland will support Milwaukie's bid to bring single-A minor league baseball to a site near the border of the two cities, Milwaukie Mayor Jeremy Ferguson said last week after meeting with Portland Mayor Sam Adams.

Adams committed to lend Portland staff who are experts in facilities development to help land the team and figure out how the future Tacoma light rail station can best serve the potential stadium and downtown Milwaukie, Ferguson said.

View full sizeAnkrom MoisanAnkrom Moisan architecture firm created a design for the site that includes a ballpark, stadium seating for 4,000, on-site parking and a brewpub.

"The success of the baseball stadium will largely depend on how successful we are in planning access into and out of that light rail station," Ferguson said.

Milwaukie received a state grant to develop that access, but the station is in Portland, so the two cities will have to cooperate in determining what development is possible.

"They've been through land use planning before with PGE Park and the Rose Garden Arena," Ferguson said of Portland city staff. "They've really got the expertise and we've got the TGM (state transportation growth management) grant."

A spokesman for Adams did not returns calls seeking comment.

Milwaukie wants to buy an 8-acre property occupied by an Oregon Department of Transportation maintenance yard to build the baseball stadium. The city is working with Mike Higgins, a former PGE Park official, to find a team from the Northwest League. The stadium would seat 4,000 people, plus skyboxes, and cost between $20 million and $30 million, by early estimations.

The city would also like to renovate an empty administrative building on the property into a brewpub, in which the McMenamin brothers are interested, according to city officials.

After the Portland Beavers, a Triple A team, moved to Tuscon, both cities investigated the prospect of filling the Portland-area's baseball vaccuum. Vancouver is in talks with the Yakima Bears to move to Clark College, but is tied up in a debate about how Clark County would pay for the stadium.

Adams also said he would be interested in reviewing the city of Milwaukie's plan to make the project feasible, Ferguson said. The city is working on a finance plan that would determine the cost of building the stadium and running it, but that is still in its early stages.

State transportation officials said they would trade the land if Milwaukie found a suitable replacement property, Ferguson said, and they have identified a few within Clackamas County.

A trade would greatly reduce the cost of the project. "We are looking at the feasibility now, but we don't know until we get a little farther along in the planning what the property will cost," Ferguson said.